


Balancing Act

by backjeanpocket



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Adult Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Cooking, Domestic Boyfriends, Domestic Fluff, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Established Relationship, Fluff, Food as Love Language, M/M, POV Richie Tozier, POV Third Person Limited, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Weight Gain, richie is basically eddie's live-in cook
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:06:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26901850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/backjeanpocket/pseuds/backjeanpocket
Summary: Richie Tozier loves cooking. He hasn’t always. But he does now, because he has a boyfriend, and boyfriends need food.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 6
Kudos: 110
Collections: It fandom prompts Fall 2020 Gift Exchange





	Balancing Act

**Author's Note:**

> Gift ficlet for the It Fall 2020 Gift Exchange! Written for Tumblr user @iamnotokaywithit, based on their prompt "Once they move in together, one or both of Reddie gain happy relationship weight."
> 
> "I’m doing a balancing act with a stack of fresh fruit  
> in my basket. I love you. I want us both to eat well."
> 
> —Christopher Citro, "Our Beautiful Life When It's Filled With Shrieks"

Richie Tozier loves cooking. He hasn’t always. Actually, he used to order an upsetting amount of delivery — there was a time when Jade Wok had been saved at the top of his favorite contacts. But he loves cooking now, because he has a boyfriend, and boyfriends need food.

In the months since he and Eddie moved into their first shared apartment, he’s thrown himself into cooking with a level of enthusiasm that had been previously unthinkable to him, learning to improvise, to swap out ingredients in a pinch, to come up with odd new combinations you wouldn’t think would work, until, miraculously, they do (see: honey + brie grilled cheese, which Eddie had quirked an eyebrow at, at first, but later requested on three more occasions).

Richie’s got some quick meals in his back pocket, for when they’re running late for work on weekdays (Eddie likes peanut butter energy bites and breakfast burritos), little snacks for when they’re lounging around on weekends (Eddie likes pretzels + white bean artichoke dip and cherry crostini) and, once a month, he spends long hours plugging away at fancy date night meals, filling their kitchen with plumes of steam and thick waves of aromatic heat (Eddie’s favorite of these meals had been roasted squash with poached cranberries). The recipes don’t always turn out like their pictures, but what makes up for Richie’s sometimes less-than-perfect execution is the fact that Eddie tries everything he makes, even if he has to scrape the char from it first.

Now, it’s a Friday night at home, and, true to form, Richie’s cooking dinner. Well, technically, he’s already finished, so he’s absently stirring a simmering chicken and barley stew with one hand and flipping through Netflix offerings with the other, while he waits for Eddie to come back from the bathroom.

“What about that tiny house show?” he calls out. “Which is not about hobbits, apparently. Should be, though.”

Down the hall, he hears Eddie groan.

“I know, it’s Tolkien brain. Hey, but there might be some, like, kombucha microbrewing — that’d be up your alley.”

Eddie’s quiet.

Richie shuffles over to the threshold and calls out down the hall. “You okay?”

There’s a pause. Then he hears Eddie breathe a sigh. “Yeah.”

“What’s up?” He hooks the ladle over the edge of the pot and crosses to the bathroom, where Eddie’s standing with his back to the door, in front of the sink, staring down the mirror. Richie catches his eyes in the glass. “Hey.”

Eddie fixes his gaze on his reflection again, presses his mouth into a thin line. “I don’t get it.”

“I just meant, it’s — I dunno, tiny houses… seems like a hipster thing, so—”

“No, not…” Eddie says, bracing himself wide against the sink counter with both hands. “Not that.”

“What?”

“I don’t get why… y’know, I’m.” He’s quiet, mulling it over. He quirks his mouth in frustration. Then, with one sharp, Eddie Kaspbrak-patented jab of a hand, he huffs, “I’m gaining _weight.”_

“What?” Richie says again, graspingly.

“Like—” Eddie hikes up the fabric of his shirt, presses his hands to his stomach, traces them around to his sides, pinches the skin there. “This, all of this. I didn’t used to have this.”

“You didn’t used to—”

“Didn’t used to have this weight here, before. And it doesn’t—” Eddie shakes his head. “I don’t get _why—”_ he goes on, counting on his fingers, “it’s like, I have the PT, and the running group, and the yoga, you know, and _still.”_ He throws his hands up.

“What’s wrong with a little weight?” Richie asks, thinking of how, not even a year prior, he’d been so thin, dwarfed by his hospital bed, and all that enormous, beeping machinery.

“I don’t—” Eddie shrugs. He stares at the mirror, catches Richie’s eyes again. “I don’t look good.”

“You look incredible. Are you kidding?”

Richie _does_ think he looks incredible. Of course he looks incredible — he’s fucking _alive._ Really, he could look like anything, and Richie’d still be curlicuing his name in proverbial gel pen all over his proverbial notebooks, with little hearts over the “i”s. The guy he’s been in love with since he was a kid is standing in their shared bathroom, in sweatpants and one of Richie’s old Foreigner T-shirts, and as far as Richie’s concerned, there’s never been a better-looking person.

“No, you see what I’m talking about, though?” Eddie wheels around, grabs at his sides again, jostling the fabric in fistfuls.

Richie adjusts his glasses. “Hm. Yeah, here’s what I see.” He pads across the tile, slips an arm around Eddie’s waist, and laces the fingers of his free hand through Eddie’s where they’re pressed against his side. “I see my hot jock boyfriend wearing my clothes,” he drawls, with his voice low, dropping his mouth to the slope between his shoulder and neck and planting a kiss there that’s cut short by a peeved noise from Eddie.

“I’m serious, Rich,” Eddie grouses, batting him away. “I have this…” he sighs, rolling his eyes. “I have a _tummy.”_

“So do I. Least yours has a cute face attached.”

“Richie.”

“You like _mine.”_

“Well, you’ve _always_ had yours,” Eddie shoots back, folding his arms.

“Not as a kid,” Richie counters, smirking.

Eddie’s grimace falters. “Not as a kid.” He grins. “You were a rail.”

“I was a Gumby.”

Eddie snorts. “You were a Gumby.”

Richie eyes him warmly. He sidles up beside him, where he’s leaning with his back to the sink counter, and turns to look at him. “I do think you look incredible.”

Eddie studies his face, then sighs relentingly. “I know you do.”

“I think you’ve never looked better.”

“What about all those years in between, hm?” Eddie challenges with a smirk, jutting his chin out. “Twenties, thirties.”

“Oh, all those years you _weren’t_ standing here in my T-shirt, you mean?” Richie says with a grin, slipping a finger under its hem. Eddie lets the tug urge him closer, and he closes the distance, glides his hands up Richie’s arms and pecks him on the lips. “Nope. No contest.”

Eddie hums. “Okay.” He drums his fingers on Richie’s biceps as a smile blooms across his face. “Speaking of contests.”

“ _Great British Bake Off_?”

Eddie nods, beaming.

“Perfect.” Richie scoops his arms around his middle, dips down to mold himself against him, and kisses him, hard, feeling as punch-drunk as ever when they pull apart. He presses his forehead to Eddie’s and asks, tentatively, “You don’t, uh… d’you want me to cook less or something?”

Eddie laughs. “Fuck no. That’s, like, your greatest asset.”

“Well, fuck me very much,” Richie says, with an explosive cackle, as Eddie pulls him by the arm out through the doorway.


End file.
